Why I Gave Up Moisturizer For Good

I Haven't Used Moisturizer In Two Years — & Here's Why

I have a surefire, crowd-pleasing, absolute doozy of a party trick. It’s not opening one bottle of beer against the lid of another — those days are behind me. I can’t do a backflip, or the splits. The only impression I can comfortably land is my mother and, these days, that doesn’t even take much effort. Want to know what it is? I can silence any audience with one sentence: "I don’t use moisturizer."

Coming out of the mouth of a hapless bachelor or a teenager, it might not be so surprising. But as a beauty journalist — and one who writes about skin a lot — it’s on par with saying I like to eat my bananas unpeeled. People are mystified, sometimes faintly disgusted, but always interested. Moisturizer is probably the core tenet of the universal skin-care routine, the one thing people will slap on even if they do nothing else, so saying I do without translates to many as "I don’t take care of myself." In reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth: I have an almost embarrassingly elaborate regimen, haven’t gone to bed with makeup on in years, and am fastidious about SPF to the point that my boyfriend half-jokes that I’d probably sooner take a bullet than stand in direct sunlight.

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I stopped using moisturizer in 2016 on a dare, for the sake of a good story. Excited to finally become beauty’s answer to Daniel Day-Lewis and go full "method," I said yes. Funnily enough, it turned out to be the best thing I’d ever done for my skin, and I haven’t looked back.

To recap, I was originally introduced to the idea of giving up moisturizer by clinical facialist Kate Kerr. Initially, I scoffed at the idea. I thought I had dry skin, I loved thick creams, adored facial oils, and always chose foundations that had "hydrating" in the name. “It’s strange to me how many intelligent women can believe that their skin just fundamentally has a problem, rather than thinking it might be the products they’re using,” Kerr said to me the first time I spoke to her. She was right — I had just accepted that I had "dry" skin without ever considering that my beloved creams could be doing more harm than good. "When you look in the mirror and see flaky dryness, your instinct is to reach for some lotion, apply it, and presto, you can’t see those flakes anymore, so you think the moisturizer has done its job," Kerr said. "In reality, all you’re doing is compressing down that dead skin, stopping it from shedding naturally, and impacting your skin’s barrier function."

Aesthetic doctor David Jack seconded Kerr's stance, telling me, "The effects of moisturizer are usually pretty superficial and short-lived. Of course, it feels lovely to apply and it seems to, at least in the moment, solve the issue of dryness. But it’s not actually providing long-term hydration.” Your skin is hygroscopic, meaning it takes water from the air, as well as from the foods and liquids we consume. We also produce hyaluronic acid (HA) naturally, which holds an impressive 1,000 times its own weight in water. HA is a humectant, which means it draws water to the skin and helps to protect from water loss. (There are other humectants, such as sodium PCA, which you also produce naturally.) The other kind of moisturizers you might find are occlusives and emollients. An occlusive forms a physical barrier, no matter how imperceptible, over your skin (like an oil or a silicone), while an emollient is actually more of a skin-softener than a skin hydrator.

Both Kerr and Dr. Jack said that, on your skin’s hierarchy of needs, exfoliation, SPF, and antioxidants rank a lot higher than moisturizing. “Your skin has a homeostatic balance that it will inevitably return to, so applying a moisturizer that’s just forming some kind of barrier won’t ‘fix’ much,” Dr. Jack explained. Your skin needs to shed every day, so exfoliation — both natural and the kind you do with a little glycolic acid toner on a cotton ball — is integral. “So many people confuse dead skin with dry skin,” Kerr told me. “Moisturizer impedes this process, and while exfoliation is often thought of as really harsh, it will actually strengthen your skin’s barrier function by stripping away weakened cells on the skin’s surface and letting stronger, fresher cells underneath come forward.”

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I still exfoliate manually a few times a week, usually with Murad’s Pore Reform Skin Smoothing Polish, and use a chemical exfoliant once a week. As thorough a cleanse as you might think you’re getting, SPF and makeup can still linger on the skin, so it's best to give things a helping hand. As for that dry skin I thought I had? Turns out it was just super dehydrated. As I covered in my original article, there are some people who do have genuinely dry skin, like eczema or psoriasis sufferers, who will need moisturizer. (Also, I did take a little tub of face cream with me when I went skiing, as high altitudes wreak havoc on your skin.)

Two years down the line, my skin feels the best it ever has. I don’t experience any tightness or dryness, and I used to go to bed sticky-faced with thick cream. I also sleep a little easier knowing that by keeping my production of HA active, I’m also keeping my collagen and elastin production levels ticking along nicely. But as they say on /r/SkincareAddiction: Your mileage may vary. If you love facial oils and don’t want to give them up, don’t. I still use lotion on my body, primarily because serum is too expensive to use all over, but also because of the routine of it. I know plenty of women who have aged fabulously while swearing by Nivea Creme, and while there may be other factors at play there (older generations had a lot less exposure to pollution, for one), I’m not in the business of telling anyone their beauty choices are wrong. I’d urge you to give it a try, or at least read a few clinical trials or studies to help you make an informed choice, but for now, I’m okay being an outsider.